Okayyyy friends. Part 2 of my Adventure Summer Series (I just made that up) is all about the muzak. Music, in layman terms. I don’t know about y’all, but there is something about live music that gets me like nothing else can. Maybe it’s because I’ve been telling my family that I was going to be a rockstar and tour the country in a tour bus since I was 5 years old. That is, until life slapped me in the face with the realization that you need actual musical talent to become a rockstar. Oh, cruel world. Or maybe it’s because I grew up listening to my pops play classic rock literally since I was in the womb (Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan.. anyone?). Whatever the reason, since I can’t make beautiful music, I admire the heck outta those who can.

There’s something about being at a show, feeling the music beat in your chest and seeing a crowd of people connect on this level that just makes me come alive. Lyrics and melodies allow you to travel through space and time. Simultaneously, a concert can make you feel more present by allowing you to escape from any life stressors for a minute. I guess in a way it reminds me of meditation. A louder one.

I’m giving you this back story so that you can understand WHY I go to so many live shows, because believe me.. I go to A LOT. I can’t be an artist, but I CAN go see one and be along for their ride. So as per my usual routine, I’ve been to a lot of concerts this summer. These days I mainly go to country, outlaw country or classic rock concerts, but I appreciate allllll kinds of music. I’m going to touch on a few of my fav’s thus far, this year.

First of all, I saw THE CHIEF…. Mr. Eric Church. The man played for nearly 3 hours. THREE. HOURS. No opener. Just him. If you haven’t seen him live yet, what are you even doing with your life? Anywho.. I went with a good friend of mine, sipped on some Jack Daniel’s and then got a little late-night breakfast while we waited for the traffic to die down for an easy commute (i.e., cheaper Uber) home.

And oh my gosh, you guys… I checked one off the ol’ bucket list this summer by seeing the legendary TOM PETTY. He’s still got it!! Ok, so I never saw him live before to actually make that comparison, BUT he sounded fantastic and that was a show I will never forget. He even had the amazing Chris Stapleton OPENING for him. I thought I was going to spontaneously combust seeing this show. Chris Stapleton is a headliner all by himself and one of the best musicians this day and age has seen. I’ve seen him several times, but seeing him followed by Tom Petty was surreal and will continue to be an amazing memory of mine for years to come.

Then there come the festivals.

The 3 day Lake Shake Music festival is a newer country fest in Chi. Regrettably, I’m at the age where 3 days of a music festival seems like A LOT. By “a lot” I mean you feel like you might die come Monday morning. But country fests are different for some reason. They’re manageable. I can do 3 days of one and still feel pretty good and not completely exhausted beyond belief after. Perhaps this is because I’ve matured or perhaps it’s because I’m doing it wrong. I like to think it’s because my gut health is rock solid thanks to proper nutrition (shameless plug). ;-) Nonetheless, some of my favorite artists and groups played Lake Shake this year, a couple being Whiskey Myers, The Cadillac Three and The Brothers Osborne. These dudes, respectively, are rock and roll country to the core. I feel like a badass just listening to them. Also in attendance, a badass LADY of country music… Miranda Lambert. I have been a HUGE fan of hers for years and somehow she made me an even bigger one with her latest album, “The Weight of These Wings.” It’s gritty and relatable for heartbreak, as well as, falling in love and just plain perfect. Seeing her live is always magical. As you can tell, I like my country rockin’, how ‘bout you (Eric Church reference… anyone? Bueller?)? Aside from this musical recap, I went to this fest with 2 of my best country music ride or die gal-pals which is what really always makes the show the best… the folks you share it with.

Following Lake Shake is another 3 day music festival about a month later called the Windy City Smokeout. This is a BBQ food fest combined with live country music, or as I like to call it, heaven. I love this festival. There were a lot of great bands this year, but some highlights were Jake Owens, Jana Kramer, Kip Moore and Luke Combs. HIGHLIGHT: I was lucky enough to attend a private Jake Owen show with BIG955chicago radio station. Imagine seeing Jake Owen play in a coffee shop, except it’s a tiki bar and he’s playing country oldies. I was very stoked to be a part of that super random, special moment. The fest was fun and I went with some of my best chicks again. The first night we got kidnapped by a trolley going to Joe’s on Weed (which I was completely cool with) and ended up seeing a free live show with Charlie Worsham. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… the best moments always happen spontaneously.

Lastly (so far) this summer I saw the one and the only, Mr. Wheeler Walker Jr. This takes an acquired taste. I say that with admiration. Wheeler Walker Jr. is an experience if you have a crude sense of humor. His music is legit good and produced by one of the best producers in country music. It’s the lyrics that may lose some… profane and derogatory. But if you’ve got a sense of humor and can get in on the inside joke… he’s a trip worth taking.

That’s all I got so far this summer, but dang that’s kind of a lot!! I didn’t mean to go off on a live music review of sorts, but the point is to take y’all along on my journeys. I do this in hopes of encouraging you to take your own journeys and adventures. Whatever your musical poison is, or even if it isn’t music at all… I hope you can relate to what I’m talking about as far as the feeling it gives you. Take time out of your busy schedule and overbooked lives to make time for things that make your SOUL come alive like live music does for me.

Next Adventure I’m taking it back to travel and taking it out of the U.S. ‘Til then…

Whoa. Hey, guys. I’m still here! My baby blog has been getting neglected while I’ve been out livin’ life! Which made me think an Adventure-related blog was in order. Since I believe the key to a healthy life is living holistically and involves the mind, bod and s p i r i t… I am pro-adventure. Things like live music and travel are how I feed my soul, but really, anything can be an adventure if you make it one.

So what I’ve been up to is exactly that… checking out live music and traveling. I want to take you along on my adventures and what I learn from them to hopefully inspire you to get out there and find your own adventures. I’m going to do this in a series because I’ve been up to A LOT (if you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen me posting along the way).

First off, back in April I did both at the same time by going to one of my favorite places… NASHVILLE. Traveling to a place with live music literally everywhere. I went with my good gal pal and to be honest we had one of the worst travel experiences anyone in the history of the world has maybe ever experienced. What was supposed to be a quick getaway via a 1.5 flight arriving in Nashville at 8:30am ended up becoming an approximately 18 hour travel day.

Yah. You heard that right. EIGHTEEN HOURS. You can drive to Nashville and back from Chicago in that time.

Documented live via our angry Twitter ranting, my friend and I had our flight cancelled due to storms somewhere in between Chicago and Nash. In a desperate attempt to get the show on the road, we accepted a later flight to Dallas that would then get us to Nash by about 5pm at night. Sucked, but what else were we gonna do? Our flight to Dallas was delayed, but somewhere in the interim one flight to Nashville got through containing our luggage which we had been forced to check despite trying to carry on. Naturally.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell us something? Nahhh. Let’s figure out our next plan.

We tried a flight going out of another airline that inevitably got cancelled for the same reason. So OK, maaayybe we weren’t meant to go to Nashville today? Mayhaps the Universe was really trying to tell us something. Maybe we should go to Memphis instead? OR what if we get as close as possible to Nashville and then DRIVE the rest of the way?? Ok, yes. Let’s FLY to Memphis and rent a car. Cool.

Well then that flight gets delayed due to electrical issues. ::Audible sigh:: Eventually, we board our flight to Memphis. It goes a little something like this…

*Gets on flight to Memphis*

*Falls asleep*

*Wakes up in Birmingham, Alabama*

Wait.. where in the F are we??? MORE STORMS. Our flight landed in Birmingham because we were running out of fuel and then the lovely pilots announced that they were done for the evening. How nice for them. You can’t make this $h!t up, y’all.

So Plan L or whatever the heck plan we’re on now.. rent a car in Birmingham. Drive to Nash. We are frickin’ Thelma & Louise at this point. Planes, Trains & Automobiles up in here.

But WE DID IT! Arrived in Nash at roughly 2am. Seething that we lost an ENTIRE day of a 2.5 day trip. Still muttering to ourselves, “But what does it all meannnn??”

The next day we decided to cram everything we intended on doing in 2 days into 1. And we did so pretty dang successfully if I do say so myself!! We kicked it off on the Nashvegas strip.. Broadway. Live music on every roof and patio we could. Then headed out to East Nashville for some dinner, drinks and music at some of my favorite spots. Even caught a Cubs game on TV (baseball nerd alert)! And lastly, we went to Santa’s Pub which is a double wide where folks get all chummy and do karaoke. One of my favorite not-so-secret-anymore spots.

The next day, which was supposed to be our last day, we decided to enjoy as much of as possible before our flight. We had casually joked about getting tattoos, but by the time we checked out a tattoo place there wasn’t enough time before our flight to make it happen. Bummer. As we were getting ready to head back and pack, though, we finally got some reimbursement for our troubles from the airline and they extended our trip free of charge to make up for the lost day! Hardly a reimbursement, if you ask me, but something was better than nothing!

WOOHOO! One more day in Nashville!? What did we do?? You guessed it. We got those tattoos. My friend’s first and my fifth, but an awesome memory either way. Now that we had extra time we decided to head out to a spot a friend of mine worked at that I’d never been to just to say hello. It was a cool local spot, but the best part was that my friend gave us a recommendation for another place to check out that was particularly fun on Monday nights. The 5 Spot for Motown Monday’s.

NOW THIS WAS COOL. A completely unique experience. It was like walking onto the set of Dirty Dancing (but more PG than PG13). Folks were packed in, grooving to all different kinds of tunes, all dressed in their own styles and having the time of their lives. It was actually so much fun that we left believing that the reason for our travel woe’s was so that we got to experience Motown Monday. On top of that, another friend of mine that lives in Nashville had been out of town and flew back in that night so we got to say hello to him, as well. A very odd and random sequence of events, but that’s how the best adventures usually go.

We ended up spending way more money than planned and were quite a bit more exhausted than necessary, but with a pretty great story and a lot more character built from our struggles. Just to reiterate.. life is what you make it and literally ANYTHING can be an adventure. Listen to the Universe. Surrender to the experience. I’m glad I had an equally spontaneous pal by my side for this one because it could have gone very differently.

On Part 2 of my recent *Adventure* blog series, I’m going to get more specific with live music: which shows I’ve been attending and what live music does for me. Feel free to share your adventures with me, as well!

Welp. :: ahem:: I’M A CERTIFIED YOGA TEACHER!!! ::celebratory party dance:: As Dietitian Gone WILD, I am a huge advocate for adventure. Anything can be an adventure if you make it and life is a hell of a lot more interesting when you see it this way. I crave adventure. I chase adventure. And it ignites something in my soul that I believe plays a vital role in my holistic health equation.

This yoga teacher training journey was one of my most recent adventures. 2016 was… a year. For all of us. The highs and lows were extreme for me. The Cubs won the World Series, after all, so I guess karma needed to balance that out with some other things (cough, cough..like our current political situation.. cough, cough). 2016 was just a year of… uncertainty and unknown. Which, hey… isn’t that how all of the best adventures begin?

In the midst of all the chaos, I began seeking calm. I was in need of some serious inner peace and began finding it through meditation. It was amazing how a simple 10 minute meditation could improve my anxiety, mood and outlook for the day. At the same time, I was practicing yoga.

Now, I’ve practiced yoga for years. Occasionally I’d take class at a studio, but I mostly practiced at home as a means of exercise. I used to dance in high school and college and I'm a runner, so yoga was a nice way to balance running that felt natural to me. Finding meditation took my yoga practice to the next level.

I was discussing my love of yoga with someone last year and was asked if I would ever consider becoming a yoga instructor. It seemed so natural to say, “yes,” and yet, I’d never even considered it before…

Why hadn’t I considered it before? I've asked myself this a lot since then and I really don’t know why. I guess the picture of a yoga instructor in my mind had always been so goddess-like. So calm, wise, in perfect shape. Nothing that, in my mind, I even came close to (Yes, dietitians are human. We're all about that bod love and acceptance, but we aren’t resistant to insecurities. It’s a bummer.). So the thought of being a yoga teacher never even crossed my mind in all the years I’d practiced.

Now, however, I was in a new state of mind. A mind that understood yoga was not at all about being perfect or comparing. Yoga is about acceptance and practice and self-love and I was moving towards a realization that self-love is the door to love for all beings. In this new state of mind, I absolutely would consider becoming a yoga instructor, if only for my own personal growth. Maybe I won’t even teach, but I’ll grow (I told myself at the time).

I did some research through friends and the internet, went into the closest CorePower Yoga studio, took a Hot Power Fusion Class (HPF), and asked about the HPF Yoga Teacher Training program. I didn’t sign up that day, but I already had signed up in my mind.

I signed up a week or two later and began my journey.

And what a journey it has been!

Surprisingly, delving deeper into the mechanics of yoga actually back-tracked my spiritual journey a bit. Normally, in a yoga class, I would focus only on myself. However, now as a trainee I had to study other bodies and how the instructors handled them. This took me outside myself, but it was for a greater purpose. Being a yoga teacher is actually pretty tough work, y’all!! There’s a lot going on that instructors make look so smooth and effortless. I think this is another reason I had never considered being a yoga teacher… it means SO much to me. It’s such a beautiful gift and touches people so deeply. I don’t want to be the one to lead a crummy class and ruin this amazing thing! If I do it, I want to do it PERFECTLY. And there’s that word again… “perfect.” It’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect, though, as they say…

Life has been busier than ever during the 8 weeks I’ve been learning to be a yoga teacher. In typical life fashion.. everything happens all at once or not at all. I’ve been exhausted and anxious, excited and motivated. Mostly, I've been incredibly inspired by my teacher trainer instructors and fellow trainees. And it’s gone by SO STINKIN’ FAST.

But, here I am.

A certified yoga teacher.

Proving myself wrong, which is really the only person I should ever compete with for the sole purpose of self-improvement.

Since I had such an amazing experience and want to continue to grow, I signed up for Core Power’s Extensions program for another 5 weeks of yoga teacher training. Sending so much love and gratitude to all those who offered me support and encouragement along the way. <3